Before Melanie Clark’s father died, this was the request he communicated to his mother, Julie Clark (at right with Melanie).

Melanie was only five at the time. In the coming years, her grandmother filled Melanie’s life with experiences that expanded Melanie’s world and gave her a much broader understanding of life—a cruise when Melanie was nine, the chance to take part in the People to People Ambassadorial Program in Australia during high school, other opportunities for learning and experience.

“She is always trying to push me to keep growing as an individual,” Melanie says, “to keep pushing myself forward and go after what I want to do.”

Musical tickets lead to Melanie’s future

Possibly most important to Melanie’s future, Julie Clark introduced Melanie to UIS by bringing her to performances at the Sangamon Auditorium on the UIS campus. Continue reading

Eric Needham loves the outdoors. Walking through a forest, he can tell you the names of trees and identify the genus of a bark beetle.

So you would think a career in forestry would be perfect for him, and in fact Eric earned his undergraduate degree in Forestry. Soon after graduating, he took a job at the USDA Forest Service at the Forest Science Laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon.

When Mike Baracani of Oglesby, Illinois, began classes at UIS, he probably didn’t realize quite how much of a challenge it would be for him to juggle a fulltime job, commute two hours a day, be a good dad to his kids and husband to his wife, all while taking online business classes at UIS.

But he’s managed to do it all, and he’s done so with a great cause—to help people get where they want to be financially. Continue reading

UIS student Sean Flamand (on the right in the picture above, second from top) is insatiably curious about life in other countries. Last summer, he traveled to Japan with a UIS group to study at the Ashikaga Institute of Technology.

This spring, thanks in part to the James L. Lundquist Memorial Scholarship, Sean will be able to study at the University of Valencia in Spain–this time on his own and for the whole semester.

Deeply grateful, Sean wrote the following letter to the Lundquist family. We reproduce it here with his permission (we added the headings). Continue reading

The year was 1982. Bill Hoffman and his wife, Ruth, had just finished doing their books for the previous year. A drought had cut crop yields as much as 50% on their grain farm, leading to a final income for the year of only $50.

“I think it’s time for me to get a job,” Bill told his wife.

The job Bill took as an electronic technician eventually led to an upper-level management position with Microsoft Corporation. At one point, Bill would be managing over a hundred people in a four-state district.

“I never could have imagined I would end up in management,” Bill says now. Continue reading